Game of Thrones! My husband loved the show, so I thought I would read the books. Worst thing I ever read.

Algebra II

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I don't even know why I persisted in finishing it, but once I start a book I almost never stop until I've read it all. The book left me with a pervasive sense of sadness. I understand why it hit me so darkly and dystopian isn't my genre anyway - but this one had such critical acclaim so I thought I'd give it a try. I should have known myself better because it really bothered me.

The Book of Hard Knocks that they made me read it at the School of Hard Knocks

Absolutely. I hesitate to bring up this book, as I don't even like remembering it. I checked it out from the library years ago. Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. It is the most god-awful depressing thing you can imagine. It's a collection of short stories following the hopeless inhabitants of a "holler" in rural Ohio. The people have nothing. No safe place to live, no healthy food, no education, nothing to care about. All they do is drugs and make babies. (for the welfare check.) Which is spent on drugs. There is not a shred of happiness in this horrible book. I ended up with not as much sorrow for the pathetic characters, beyond hope as they were, but a lingering sadness for how bleak and desperate life can be. It never got better. I should not have finished it.

Does it count if I didn't finish it? Years ago, I read many of James Michener's books, and enjoyed them. Then I started on The Covenant, about South África. I forget how far I got, but there were descriptions of barbaric torture, in graphic detail. I stopped reading there, but years later I still have those images in my mind.

We tried to watch the first episode of GOT and said, hard pass! I can't imagine slogging through anything to do with what we saw. Ick!

The show was very much toned down from the books. The books were wrote by a very, very, very, sick man.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry It was an Opra book club recommendation early on. Never read another book suggested by her. What a cess pool these third world countries are. Maybe everyone should read it so they can learn what could well be happening here with all the stupidity being accepted.

Sherry, I knew I couldn't do it. I had friends who loved GoT and kept trying to get me to watch. Not in a million years. I absolutely can not find enjoyment in watching that kind of pain.

Arcy, I did not read A Find Balance, but because of your comment, wanted to learn more about it.

Clearly, not just a regular novel and readers would want to be aware of the historical and social context.

The story takes place during India’s stark time of The Emergency.

The links below can offer some insight and illumination for those interested.

Indira Gandhi's Emergency: When India's democracy was put on pause

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0gnvq72lko

About the novel A Fine Balance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fine_Balance

I wish I could unread Lilian Jackson Braun’s final Cat Who… mystery. She clearly didn’t write it, a ghost writer seemed to be writing it while waiting for her to tell them what the story actually was. She died not long after it was published I believe, so my suspicion was probably true. The whole situation made me sad.

There is a short story by Stephen King about a boy who goes fishing at the local creek and meets the Devil. Now that was the worst of all the mind bending stories in that book of shorts but they were all memorably dreadful things. He is a very visual writer I gather. At least I knew to never read any of his books.

I dont do distopian as a rule. Not my cup of coffee so I manage to not read too much awful. I am a visual reader. If I really get into a book I see pictures.

If a book is distressing or bleak, I don't continue reading and send it back to the library (where most of my reading is from). Equally, if a book cover describes it as being "harrowing," I know it's not one that I'll read. Why anyone would choose such a book is beyond me.

To read the OP's query another way, there are some books that I wish I could un-read because I enjoyed them so much and will never have a first experience with them again. ETA spelling.

I recently mentioned that Chemotherapy can have the advantage of washing books you know well right out of your brain.

That and living to read them again for the first time.

India, in part was a "cesspool" 50 years ago because of the effects exploitative British colonialism.

Which books do I wish I could unread?

Atlas Shrugged or anything by Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead was mildly interesting to me because it was about architecture, but what insufferable characters as written by an insufferable human being.

Anything by Dean Koontz. His characters run something like this S/he is 38. They were raised in an orphanage. They have a phD and grown children. They are affluent because they sold their successful business. They have grandchildren on the way. The timelines in his books are so impossible it's ridiculous. No wonder their lives are in danger, I would want to kill them too.

The Living Bible and The Way. Derivative, biased "interpretations", antisemitic, with very loosely worded passages (using concepts that were unknown at the time the original texts were written). Extremely non-scholarly but popular because they are easy to read

Not a whole book but several stories in an anthology of 'dark' fantasy/scifi I read many years ago - they were basically torture porn and the scenes described were horrific - I still get flashbacks and it's hard to make them go away ☹️

The Twilight Series...what dreck.

Any of the Outlander series. I stopped reading them after the third one. I don't want to read books that abound with violence and cruelty. I have the newspaper for that.

A book I read at least twenty years ago that featured a horrifically graphic mauling by a Grizzly Bear. I wish I could cleanse the images from my brain.

Thank you, Pal. Much appreciated.

I love so many dystopian novels, especially post-apocalyptic novels! However.....

I wish I hadn't wasted so much time on some SciFi dystopia that was recommended to me, specifically Lucifer's Hammer (Niven and Pournelle) and Neuromancer (Gibson), even though they end up on many best-of-sci-fi lists.

Lord of the Flies. Read it for English in high school - hated it.

I agree with Pal on Atlas Shrugged. I don't know how or why I got through that. In high school, I could not finish The Grapes of Wrath, and I have not tried again since.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick. In a book club I was in, where we took turns selecting the books we would read, this was chosen by someone. I really don't care for science fiction but recently I saw this book referred to as the best science fiction book of all time. Ugh.

@dedtired, Lol!

When everyone was raving about Demon Copperhead I started reading it. Stopped after a chapter or so, tried again later and only read a few pages before I stopped for good. Maybe The Glass Castle was enough of that for me.

I agree with Carabubble re Lord of the Flies. Had the same experience in high school. None of the GoT or Outlander series appealed to me either. I started one of them and that was enough.

" When everyone was raving about Demon Copperhead I started reading it. Stopped after a chapter or so, tried again later and only read a few pages before I stopped for good. "

Different strokes......I put off reading Demon Copperhead for a long time because everyone was raving about it - and I'm not much on coming of age stories - but I loved it when I finally did read it.

Water for Elephants. Absolutely hated it. Every page contained cruelty of some sort. I know that it was very popular, but for me it is memorable because I disliked it so much.

Tbh, I've not read many of the ones mentioned here, but I did read and love Demon Copperhead. ( I too put off reading it).... The one that comes to mind for me, is The Orphan Master's Son which I know won all sorts of prestigious awards. I tried, and really hated it and probably ot about halfway through when I just couldn't do it anymore. It was so horribly depressing and just couldn't stop with everything negative you could imagine. At least for me, that was my experience. I really tried to stick with it but just had to throw in the towel.

I think someone even mentioned it here as one of their favorites.

Different strokes indeed.

I did not like Lord of the Flies either. (I read the English Lit book entirely the first night even though we were to wait for assigned chapters!).

My mother adored Gone With The Wind, the movie. I thought it and the book was okay, but only so so. Melanie was a wimp and Scarlet was an entitled b.

War and Peace was okay, but would have been much better with a lot less words.

Never understood the attraction of Dickens or Kipling, boring.

speaking of boring, I found Spare by Prince Harry hopelessly dull. I barely slogged through the thing. On the other hand, I loved Me by Elton John. It was not only extremely interesting and entertaining, it was often hilarious.

I forgot to say I agree about the last Cat Who book. A friend sent me the first ones and I ended up reading the entire series. I did notice the tendency for just about everyone to die or divorce but the books were fun enough to over come that and just dont get attached to anyone. The last one must have been a fleshing out by a ghost writer. Terrible.

I adore Dickens but I do not read him for story line perse, I read for the word play and descriptive bits. Wordy though? yes. Dickens served as editor or some such thing for the now mostly forgotten Elizabet Gaskell, only remembered today mostly for writing a condescending biography of Charlotte Bronte. Dickens considered her about the wordiest novelist he ever had to read. He tried to get her to edit her writing but failed miserably. It is gacky stuff. You can get it on line if you need to punish yourself for some sort of malfeasance or other.

You are supposed to hate lord of the Flies

I thought the Harry Potter stuff was pretty bad and unoriginal - not sure I even got through the first one.

I learned it's perfectly OK to stop reading things that I don't like. Life's too short, so there aren't many books I wish to unread.

I couldn't finish Uncle Tom's Cabin either - couldn't get past the scene where they drowned a man's dog. Don Quixote is another with so many horrible scenes, I gave up ☹️

I tried reading Harry Potter but couldn't get into it.

Diana Wynne Jones wrote better stories about children with magical powers before Rowling was around.

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. It’s about fighting vampires and talked a lot about how the shortening of days in the fall season meant the vampires had a growing advantage as the time they were inactive was shrinking so fast. I swear that triggered my SAD. I never had a problem with it before.

I tried, I really tried to like One Hundred Years of Solitude. I slogged through about 40 pages and it felt like a hundred hours of boredom.

Re: Stephen King, although I have only read the early ones...I think he has great ideas, and the story plots are good, but his ability to write dialogue was not very good: it just often sounded stilted and not natural a lot of the time. Enough to distract me when reading from the plot.

I only read the first Harry Potter which I enjoyed well enough, but I can't read her anymore since she has become too strident about her believes. She's welcome to believe them, I am welcome to not like her because of them.

One Hundred Years of Solitude-- same. I loved Love In the Time of Cholera, so thought I would also enjoy One Hundred Years....... I kept trying but after under 50 pages I had to admit defeat. It seemed like everyone of the 29000 characters had the same name and I just oculd not follow!

Palimpsest, I like Stephen King very much, but I too think he uses an unusual/stilted dialogue. I heard his voice some time ago and I think it's just that Maine accent.